Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've read a great deal about turtle vitamins and suppliments. I was just wondering if everyone (except me) gives them to their turtles? I have 2 ornate box turtles (Rex and Jaz). One of them of them has been with me for close to 2 years now without any suppliments. We do feed a variety of fruits, veggies and insects and both Rex and Jaz eat great and look very healthy. I was just wondering if there is something I was missing?

Oh they live in an outside enclosure so get plenty of natural sunlight if that matters.

Thanks,
Matt

I supplement vitamins and calcium because I want to be sure that mine stay as healthy as possible. Although I provide as varied a diet as possible, its probably not as varied as what they'd find on their own.
Stephanie

Jaz has never been on any supplements. I always fed a good variety of foods and had one of the cuttle-bones (that you give birds) in the pen for use at their leisure. If you soak your pen for a good while and allow the bugs to come up, I promise Jaz will hunt them down. She loves those white bugs under the grass. I would imagine they get enough if they eat a good variety. I've seen boxies at my property in east texas, and there isn't any vege garden anywhere.......so all they eat are bugs, mice, dead birds, weeds, etc. and the ones we've been fortunate to see all look healthy.

Box Turtles love them and they're great source of calcium. The tiny ones you find under logs and so forth are good for hatchlings, too, because they'll give some movement to stimulate the hatchlings' hunter instinct but not move so fast that the hatchlings -which have bad aim- can't catch them (a problem with pillbugs). Big snails are good for big turtles, of course. They have a way of husking them out of their shells but they do ingest some of their shell.

I often keep the tiny snails for a few days and feed them on fruits and stuff that I want the baby turtles to have. I don't know what the gastrointestinal tract time is for snail food, but if the snails are recently gorged on greens, etc. I'd think they pass a lot of that onto the baby turtles when they eat them.

Naturally be sure the snails aren't going to be contaminated in any way, i.e. don't harvest them from your flower bed or lawn after you've spread chemicals.